Light rail transit vehicles are electrically-powered from overhead wires. Light rail transit vehicles can operate individually, or can be linked together into trains and are typically separated from traffic.

About Light Rail Vehicles in Toronto:

Flexible. To carry even more people, light rail vehicles can be linked together like train cars to meet increased demand as ridership grows.

Above ground and underground. Light rail vehicles can travel on the surface or underground, in tunnels, depending on area conditions.

Fast boarding. With four doors on each side of the vehicles and proof of payment fares, passengers can board quickly and easily.

Efficient. In three car trains, running three minutes apart an LRT line could carry nearly 17,000 people per hour in each direction.

Accessible. With 100% low-floor entrances, LRT vehicles are fully accessible for riders of all mobility levels.

Electrically powered. That means zero emissions on the street.

Manufactured in Canada. In Thunder Bay, by Bombardier.

LRT and streetcars

faster and more reliable

multiple low-floor entrances

modern fare payment system for fast boarding

dedicated lane separated from traffic

co-ordinated traffic signal timing

much wider stop spacing

can carry 280 passengers

LRT and buses

more comfortable for riders

quieter

no emissions on the street

carries many more riders, particularly in a constrained environment such as an arterial roadway.

From the latest TTC commissioner meeting, the status report on LRT Projects in Toronto has this bit of news:

Light Rail Vehicles
In July 2010, Metrolinx awarded the contract for the manufacture of 182 light rail vehicles (LRVs) to Bombardier. The vehicles are being designed and engineered.

A mock-up of the new vehicles may be available for the public this summer.

Please note that this is a different mock-up from the streetcar mock-up that was displayed back in November of 2011.

So the LRTs have doors on both sides and the new streetcars have doors on one side and they still have to loop. And will the Queen and Spadina Streetcars be that long as shown to take many more passengers...

I don't think that Transit City vehicles need a thread separate from the general Transit City thread.

Unless I hear serious disagreement, I'm going to merge the threads.

I see nothing wrong for having a thread for the new Metrolinx LRVs, distinct from the Transit City thread (which if it is still around, should be renamed.

Though I've got a big problem with this thread title, which is as confusing as heck, given TTC are calling their new downtown streetcars TTC Light Rail Vehicles. Surely this thread should be called New Metrolinx Light Rail Vehicles ... or TTC suburban Light Rail Vehicles, to differentiate from the TTC Light Rail Vehicles.

At the same time, perhaps we should be renaming the New Light Rail Vehicle (LRV) Maintenance & Storage Facility thread, which is about the Ashbridges Bay Light Rail Vehicle (LRV) Maintenance and Storage Facility, but not the other 3 LRV Maintenance & Storage Facilities (Black Creek aka Kodak, Conlins, or Jane-Finch).

At the same time, it would be nice if mods could move the Sheppard subway, Eglinton monorail, etc., discussion out the the 4 threads for the 4 active LRT and put them in appropriate threads, so that there can be discussion threads for each of the active projects, without having to rehash ancient history again and again.

Efforts to use $1.7 million from a city windfall to save programs ranging from High Park Zoo to dentures for seniors have failed.
Instead, council’s budget committee voted on Monday to stick with the plan recommended by city staff to earmark most of the $292 million, year-end surplus to buy streetcars, with $52 million going to boost city reserve funds.
One of the moves was to put $6.5 million into the sick pay gratuity, a perk that retiring police officers up to nine months’ pay if they bank unused sick days.
“I think the optics of it are not good, and I recognize that the optics are not good,” said Councillor Mike Del Grande, the budget committee chair.
However, Del Grande said there was nothing his committee could do about the sick bank gratuity because the police collective agreement is negotiated by the police services board.
“That budget comes to the city and it’s pay or else,” Del Grande said. “People mistakenly think we’re in charge of that particular budget.”
Meanwhile, police board chair Alok Mukherjee told reporters at city hall that he needs the provincial government’s help to reform the sick pay gratuity.
“We do have to find better ways to manage benefits,” Mukherjee said. “My fellow board members share the concern, the province shares the concern, so there has to be a systemic response that has to be province-wide.”
The committee voted down a number of proposals tabled by Councillor James Pasternak to restore items cut when the city’s operating budget was set in January.
But Pasternak failed to gain committee support to spend:• $450,000 for the Hardship Fund, which helps the poor pay for essential medical items.• $200,000 to pay half the denture lab costs for low-income seniors.• $787,000 to retain 16 youth outreach workers this year that the city plans to lay off.• $50,000 for High Park Zoo to augment private fundraising.• $110,600 to continue operating Centre Island’s Far Enough Farm, due to close June 30.• $110,000 for new sports equipment ($2,500 for each of the city’s 44 wards).
The committee did back spending $180,000 to fight bedbugs, but on condition the province provide $500,000.
The committee also refused to cancel new garbage pickup fees charged to charities that have enjoyed free pickup. When fully implemented, the new fees will give the city an extra $2 million to $2.5 million a year.
After his suggestions were voted down, Pasternak told reporters he expects council will debate the items before any final decision is made.
The surplus, representing money left over in departmental budgets at the end of 2011, had been earlier estimated at $154 million. But the final figure came in at $292 million, thanks to a combination of higher revenues and lower costs than expected.
It’s only natural that councillors would want to look at spending some of the money to save needed programs, Pasternak said.
“That surplus was much larger than anticipated and it should be no surprise to anyone that we would resuscitate the programs that we were told to cancel,” he said.
In retrospect, council may have cut too deeply in January, before the final surplus — disclosed publicly late last month — was known, he added.
“At times, we (councillors) felt we were amputating before we really did the diagnosis,” Pasternak added. “There was a belief that we had a very strong surplus that could preserve a lot of programs.”
The committee meeting was attended by police board chair Alok Mukherjee, who told reporters that the police union, the Toronto Police Association, fought to hang on to the sick-pay perk.
In the latest four-year police contract, which was settled shortly after Mayor Rob Ford took office, the maximum payout was cut to six months from nine months, but only for new hires. The existing 5,300 uniformed officers and 2,000 civilian employees keep their sick-pay rights.
Sick-bank payouts to officers when they retire have been averaging $10.7 million a year over the past five years. The sick-pay fund had $12.4 million in it at the end of 2011 and the committee recommended adding $6.5 million to boost it to $18.9 million.
“We have recognized that this has been a problem for quite some time, and we attempted to respond,” said Councillor Michael Thompson, the police board’s vice-chair.
“We were able to make a small dent. We weren’t able to deal with it in the fashion that we had hoped.”

It used to be standard practice for the TTC to run shorter Subway trains after 6 PM and weekends. The Gloucester trains went from 8 short cars to 6 cars, while the newer trains went from 6 long cars to 4 cars.

I can see the TTC running shorter two or one car trains in the off peaks, if the numbers warrant it to be so.

It used to be that the Bloor PCC streetcars (followed by the Queen PCC streetcars after the Bloor-Danforth Subway opened) ran in 2 PCC car trains during the rush hours. The trains were replaced by the articulated streetcars. but without the couplers.

So what was done with the Subway trains and PCC streetcars could be done with the Transit City Light Rail Vehicles.

Those are the Transit City light rail vehicle mockups of the Bombardier Flexity Freedom. They will not be used or designed for the downtown streetcars. We saw the streetcar mockups last November. The real streetcar prototypes are coming later this year. The Transit City light rail vehicles will be wider than our current and the new streetcars.

Mockups are model examples. They cannot roll along under their own power, because they can't.

Prototypes will actually run on the tracks, in real weather, and real traffic.

This gets me every time. Why did we have to go for low floor LRTs if we did not have any plans to use the legacy streetcar system? Look at how narrow the passageway is between the seats which has to do with the fact that the trucks are positioned underneath. The movement of passengers inside the vehicle will be terrible and the conditions will be cramped. Frankly, the section above the trucks shown in that picture is about as claustrophobic as the rear of an Orion VII bus. Had we gone for a high floor LRV like you see in Edmonton and Calgary - and along the urban, narrow streets of San Francisco - we would not have this problem.